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Hot, isolated, and running out Hot,
running out of supplies near desperation.
Sept 25 2017[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

In the heat and humidity here in the central mountains, Meryanne Aldea fanned her bedridden mother with a piece of cardboard Sunday as the ailing woman lay on her side, relieving a large ulcer in her back.

The 63-year-old mother, Maria Dolores Hernandez, had cotton stuffed in her ears to keep flies out, since her now screenless windows were letting all sorts of bugs in. The gray-haired diabetic woman spoke with her daughter about her worries: that she would run out of prescription drugs, that they were almost out of generator fuel to keep her insulin refrigerated and to run the fans at night.
The gray-haired diabetic woman spoke with her daughter about her worries: that she would run out of prescription drugs, that they were almost out of generator fuel to keep her insulin refrigerated and to run the fans at night.

But she worried most about her daughter’s home on the floor above hers, which was destroyed by Hurricane Maria.

(CNN) - Nearly a week after Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico, the US commonwealth looks something like this: Most homes are without power and phone service, with little hope of having it restored soon. Food and medicine are dwindling, especially for those isolated by impassable roads. And rescuers still are finding and removing desperate people from their demolished communities.

It is, in short, a humanitarian crisis, San Juan's mayor told CNN on Tuesday.

"We are finding dialysis patients that haven't been able to contact their providers, so we are having to transport them in near-death conditions," Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said, recalling a group's visit to two San Juan-area nursing homes this week. "We are finding people whose oxygen tanks are running out, because ... small generators now don't have any diesel."

Searchers are trying to visit every structure in the capital area, she said.

"Our bodies are so tired, but our souls are so full of strength, that we will get to everyone that we can get to," Yulin said.

Two died in an intensive care unit in a San Juan hospital after it ran out of diesel, Yulin said. Their causes of death weren't immediately available, and it wasn't clear whether those deaths were among the 10 that the governor's office attributed to the storm.

Maria struck September 20, knocking out power for nearly all of the 3.4 million residents and demolishing structures on an island already struggling after Hurricane Irma's brush earlier this month.

Nearly 1.6 million electric customers in Puerto Rico are without power, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Energy Department, not counting those using generators as a backup.

snipped

Residents in remote areas are stranded with shrinking supplies, and some haven't been able to contact their families to tell them they survived.

Coffee growers Gaspar Rodriguez and Doris Velez said the food they had left has spoiled.

"You work, work and work, and it's for nothing," Rodriguez said after losing everything.

Rescuers still are "removing people from hazardous conditions -- (people who) are ill, that can't move on their own," said Carl Levon Kustin, a FEMA task force leader from California.

"We've been working feverishly to get out to these areas," Kustin said Tuesday.

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló told CNN that more support and resources for the island are needed.

While crediting the Trump administration and FEMA for responding "quickly" and "appropriately," Rosselló said, "There are some challenges and we need more resources."

Near the town of Utuado, Rosario Heredia, 56, who is diabetic, is in her house, which is spewing water from every corner. She reaches high into her closet for a piece of clothing and squeezes water from it like a soaked sponge.

Heredia had hoped that help would've arrived by now -- but it hasn't.

Trees are broken and twisted on the island, leaving behind a wasteland. Roads have completely washed away, and others are blocked by debris.

After losing everything, some Puerto Ricans say the only thing they have left is their faith.

"Really, we are people who serve God," Wilfredo Villegas said. "And yes, we are saddened because when you lose every little thing you may have, it's not easy to recover ... but we have not lost our faith."

much more at link

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“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~ Anatole France

Crowds jammed the cruise ship dock of San Juan on Thursday desperately hoping to get on board the Royal Caribbean cruise ship the Adventure of the Seas, which was sent to help evacuate people struggling to find a way off Puerto Rico following the destruction of Hurricane Maria.

More than 2,000 people sweltered in the hot sun forming a line stretching down the shore and a pier.
"We've been in this line forever and it is hot," said Taylor McCloskey, who goes to school in Miami.
She said she came to visit family in the U.S. territory after Hurricane Irma shut down her school in Florida for three weeks, and then she got stranded in Puerto Rico when Maria hit last week.
"I need to get back, I need to get back to my life," she said. "There's no water, no electricity. I don't see anything coming anytime soon. It's bad."
It wasn't clear how many of those jamming the dock would get a spot on the ship. Puerto Rico officials said only about 800 of the 1,000 tourists caught on the island would be boarding, while the other passengers would be Puerto Ricans leaving the island or friends and family of Royal Caribbean employees.

We've been standing in line since 8 a.m.," said Cara Rookwood of Philadelphia. "We have been trying to get on this supposed list that they have via email. I called my father and had him email the list but I don't think they're taking any more reservations at this point. But I'm getting a lot of conflicting information."
Rookwood and her husband, Davin Safer, were on the island of Vieques when the storm crashed in, and could not find a way back to the Puerto Rico mainland for several days, until they finally were given a ride on a private plane.

Safer said he has never experienced anything like the aftermath of the hurricane, which knocked out electricity across Puerto Rico, shut down businesses, blocked roads and ports, and left the island's 3.8 million people scrambling to find water, food and other necessities

Much more work must be done to meet Puerto Rico's critical humanitarian needs after Hurricane Maria, the US territory's top official said Saturday, while also emphasizing that the federal government is fulfilling his every request -- striking a conciliatory tone minutes after President Donald Trump lambasted a mayor who criticized the US response.

criticized the US response.
"We need to do a lot more in order for us to get out of the emergency," Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said in San Juan. "But the other thing that's also true is that the administration has answered and has complied with our petitions in an expedited manner

criticized the US response.
"We need to do a lot more in order for us to get out of the emergency," Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said in San Juan. "But the other thing that's also true is that the administration has answered and has complied with our petitions in an expedited manner
Earlier Saturday, Trump -- who plans to visit the island Tuesday -- used Twitter to criticize San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and the "leadership ability" of some in Puerto Rico who "want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort." Cruz earlier had criticized the distribution of aid and said the feds needed to do more

Weeks After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Struggles To Turn On The Lights
October 10, 20171:15 PM ET[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, the island's power grid remains in shambles, and authorities say it will take months to fully restore electricity.

Nearly 90 percent of the island is still without power, which means millions of people remain without electricity weeks after the storm, says José Román Morales, president of Puerto Rico's Energy Commission, which regulates the island's electric power authority.

In a news conference on Friday, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló could not say when the power grid would be fully up and running.

There is no estimated date right now," he said. "We have established, right at the beginning of this week, we want to have 10 percent of the energy generation in Puerto Rico. Now we're up to 10.6 percent. And our expectation is, within the next month, to have 25 percent."

It will cost an estimated $5 billion to repair the island's electricity transmission and distribution system, which was almost completely decimated by the storm.

The Two-Way
'You Have To Try': Puerto Ricans, Without Power, Find Ways Forward
Román, president of the energy commission, tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson that the system suffered such a catastrophic failure because PREPA was so deeply in debt that it was unable to finance upgrades to its generating plants. Power lines were also left more vulnerable to tree branches, other debris and strong winds.

The government-owned utility filed for bankruptcy in July in an effort to restructure its $9 billion debt. Puerto Rico itself filed for bankruptcy a few months earlier and began working with Congress to restructure debt that exceeds $120 billion.

The U.S. territory has struggled for years with an ever-mounting debt crisis. Román explains that once Puerto Rico's economy started to suffer, the power authority began issuing bonds in order to function.

Puerto Rico’s Health Care Is in Dire Condition, Three Weeks After Maria
1 hr ago[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Harry Figueroa, a teacher who went a week without the oxygen that helped him breathe, died here last week at 58. His body went unrefrigerated for so long that the funeral director could not embalm his badly decomposed corpse.
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Miguel Bastardo Beroa’s kidneys are failing. His physicians at the intensive care unit at Doctors Hospital in Carolina are treating him for a bacterial disease that he probably caught in floodwaters contaminated with animal urine.

“Because of the electricity situation, a lot of people died, and are still dying,” said Mr. Figueroa’s daughter, Lisandra, 30. “You can’t get sick now.”
Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, many sick people across the island are still in mortal peril. The government’s announcements each morning about the recovery effort are often upbeat, but beyond them are hidden emergencies. Seriously ill dialysis patients across Puerto Rico have seen their treatment hours reduced by 25 percent because the centers still lack a steady supply of diesel to run their generators. Less than half of Puerto Rico’s medical work force has reported to work in the weeks since the storm, federal health officials said.

Hospitals are running low on medicine and high on patients, as they take in the infirm from medical centers where generators failed. A hospital in Humacao had to evacuate 29 patients last Wednesday — including seven in the intensive care unit and a few on the operating table — to an American military medical ship off the coast of Puerto Rico when a generator broke down.
There are urgent attempts to help. The federal government has sent 10 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams of civilian doctors, nurses, paramedics and others to the island. Four mobile hospitals have been set up in hospital parking lots, and the U.S.N.S. Comfort, a medical ship, is on the scene. A 44-bed hospital will soon open in badly wrecked Humacao, in the southeast

But even as the Army Corps of Engineers is installing dozens of generators at medical facilities, and utility crews work to restore power to 36 hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and patients say that an intense medical crisis persists and that communications and electrical difficulties have obscured the true number of fatalities directly related to the hurricane. The official count rose on Tuesday to 43

Matching resources with needs remains a problem. The Puerto Rico Department of Health has sent just 82 patients to the Comfort over the past six days, even though the ship is staffed to serve 250. The ship’s 800 medical personnel were treating just seven patients on Monday.

The mayor of Canóvanas, in the northeast part of the island, reported over the weekend that several people in her city had died of leptospirosis, the bacterial disease Mr. Bastardo is believed to have. The Puerto Rico Department of Health said Sunday night that several cases were being evaluated, but that lab tests had not yet come back to confirm the diagnosis. At the same time, the agency urged people to drink only bottled water and to wear protective shoes near bodies of water that could be contaminated with animal urine.

José L. Cruz wakes up in the middle of the night three times a week to secure a spot in line for dialysis. His treatment hours have been cut back to save fuel for the generators that power the center.

Three weeks since Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico still dark, dry, frustrated
1 hr ago[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Late each night, Rafael Surillo Ruiz, the mayor of a town with one of Puerto Rico’s most critical ports, drives for miles on darkened roads, easing around downed power lines and crumpled tree branches — to check his email.

At the wheel of his “guagua”— local slang for an SUV — he sometimes finds a spotty cellphone signal on a highway overpass, and there he sits, often for hours, scrolling through messages. During the day, with no working landline and no Internet access, he operates more like a 19th-century mayor of Yabucoa, orchestrating the city’s business in an information vacuum, dispatching notes scrawled on slips of paper — about everything from balky generators to misdirected water deliveries — that he hands to runners

On the other side of the mayor’s favorite overpass spot, one of the generators at the area’s biggest hospital has collapsed from exhaustion, and the frazzled staff has stopped admitting new patients. Deeper into the island’s mountainous interior, thirsty Puerto Ricans draw drinking water from the mud-caked crevasses of roadside rock formations and bathe in creeks too small to have names
“We feel completely abandoned here,” Surillo Ruiz said with a heavy sigh.

It has been three weeks since Hurricane Maria savaged Puerto Rico, and life in the capital city of San Juan inches toward something that remotely resembles a new, uncomfortable form of normalcy. Families once again loll on the shaded steps of the Mercado de Santurce traditional market on a Sunday afternoon, and a smattering of restaurants and stores open their doors along sidewalks still thick with debris and tangled power lines

Thousands have fled Puerto Rico in the three weeks since Hurricane Maria hit, but for the millions remaining the struggle for life's basic necessities seems to be never-ending.
Many travel hours in search of food and bottled water, only to find empty shelves at most grocery stores.
"I've never seen this in my life, never in my life," Emma Ramirez told CNN affiliate WAPA.

Thousands have fled Puerto Rico in the three weeks since Hurricane Maria hit, but for the millions remaining the struggle for life's basic necessities seems to be never-ending.
Many travel hours in search of food and bottled water, only to find empty shelves at most grocery stores.
"I've never seen this in my life, never in my life," Emma Ramirez told CNN affiliate WAPA.

So Far Maria

claimed the lives of 45 people in Puerto Rico. That number may climb as 117 others remain unaccounted for.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has said some desperate Puerto Ricans are trying to break into wells at hazardous waste sites just to get water, even though it's unsafe to drink.
This public health threat won't be fully mitigated, the EPA said, until waterways and infrastructure are repaired and power is restored.
Two people have died of leptospirosis, a disease that spreads when the urine of infected animals gets into drinking water, according to San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

claimed the lives of 45 people in Puerto Rico. That number may climb as 117 others remain unaccounted for.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has said some desperate Puerto Ricans are trying to break into wells at hazardous waste sites just to get water, even though it's unsafe to drink.
This public health threat won't be fully mitigated, the EPA said, until waterways and infrastructure are repaired and power is restored.
Two people have died of leptospirosis, a disease that spreads when the urine of infected animals gets into drinking water, according to San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

They're already landing in Lorain, Ohio -- Puerto Rican families, with few possessions and bleak memories
We started to see it last week," says Victor Leandry, director of El Centro, a nonprofit social services agency based in this faded industrial town on the shores of Lake Erie. "Just today, we have at least four or five new families. When I walk into the building at nine in the morning, we are seeing already a migration

This isn't the norm. In what's shaping up to be the second greatest exodus to the mainland since World War II, most Puerto Ricans fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Maria will end up in New York and Florida, where hundreds of thousands of islanders already live

But as Puerto Rico's economy has deteriorated in recent years -- the country's diaspora has ballooned to 5.4 million people, far exceeding the 3.4 million who live on the island itself -- many have migrated to other parts of the U.S

Some who leave the island as a result of Hurricane Maria will end up in lesser-known Puerto Rican communities in states like Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Illinois

Many towns, like Lorain, could really use the newcomers

"As tragic as this [situation] is, it could be helpful to the Northeast Ohio economy," says Jose Feliciano, a lawyer who chairs the Hispanic Roundtable of Cleveland. "Ohio needs bodies for work."

How a month of hurricane nightmares changed Puerto Rico -- and me
October 20 12017

I am writing this in the dark. The hotel doesn't have power, and one of the generators failed. I had to walk up 10 flights of stairs to get to my hotel room because the elevators don't work. The lights have been flickering all night.
Such is life here.
If that's my biggest problem, however, I consider myself lucky.
I've covered devastation. I've covered disaster. I've covered destruction. Hurricane Maria was more.

It has upended the lives of 3.4 million people. It has cut off entire towns from each other. It has left residents without water to drink or bathe in. Enough aid has not come for many. The gravity of the recovery time is starting to set in.

Maria also devastated the people I call family, and destroyed the island that molded me into the person I am today. So for me, covering the devastation was personal. I owed it to the island that has given me so much. I was born here, and while I left when I was 3, I have returned for so many holidays. It's where I spent my summers and where I was married.
I fought the winds as the Category 4 storm smashed into Puerto Rico on September 20 and then reported the devastation around San Juan.

Most roads were closed so to see the impact outside the capital, we had to take to the air.
I was flying over an island I didn't recognize. It had no color. The once lush trees had been stripped of all shades of green. It was hard to find any power lines still standing. Even the typically bright turquoise of the ocean was muted.

As with other towns, we were their only source of news and the only way to share their own. They begged for help relaying messages home.
I asked for a list of names, numbers and a message. I promised them I would call later.
Then it was time to leave. Amid the chaos, I didn't even get the woman's name.
...
As we left Quebradillas to return to San Juan, the pilot asked if I needed to see anything else.
I asked him to fly over Corozal, a mountainous community in the interior.
He said we didn't have enough fuel to land, but a flyover was feasible. When he announced "This is Corozal," I was scared to look out the window. I was dreading what I would see.

As almost half of Puerto Rico's population remains without cell phone service, and many more without power, the company that provides some of that coverage is experiencing financial distress.

PR Wireless Inc., which operates as Open Mobile, generates 100% of its revenue in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria damaged much of the commonwealth's wireless infrastructure and electrical grid, along with many other utilities.

"There were some damages to the telecom infrastructure but on top of that you also have the power," Moody's analyst Marie Fischer-Sabatie said Friday. "The recovery of the telecom network is to an extent related to the the recovery of the power," she said, explaining that both need to be operational.

As of Oct. 19, 61% of telecommunications had been restored, according to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, but only 21% had power, according to Puerto Rico's governor.

With this, the company is experiencing revenue disruption, damage to its assets and has little cash -- just $10 million plus another $10 million in revolving credit -- to recover, according to Moody's Investors Service.

Although the company will likely receive some help from its insurers and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, "this may not be sufficient to fully alleviate liquidity concerns," Moody's said, downgrading the company on Oct. 17 to Caa2 with a negative outlook.

The rating firm said it was skeptical that there would be any positive pressure on PR Wireless's rating in the near future, due to the extent of the damage caused by the hurricane. However, a joint venture with Sprint Corp., which was announced earlier this year, could help PR Wireless, the fourth-largest wireless provider in Puerto Rico.

PR Wireless was formed in 2007 after the bankruptcy of MoviStar Inc. The company didn't respond to request for comment.

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, only a few weeks after Hurricane Irma -- another massive storm -- hit the northeast part of the island. The U.S. Virgin Islands have been similarly devastated.

Although the company will likely receive some help from its insurers and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, "this may not be sufficient to fully alleviate liquidity concerns," Moody's said, downgrading the company on Oct. 17 to Caa2 with a negative outlook.

The rating firm said it was skeptical that there would be any positive pressure on PR Wireless's rating in the near future, due to the extent of the damage caused by the hurricane. However, a joint venture with Sprint Corp., which was announced earlier this year, could help PR Wireless, the fourth-largest wireless provider in Puerto Rico.

PR Wireless was formed in 2007 after the bankruptcy of MoviStar Inc. The company didn't respond to request for comment.

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, only a few weeks after Hurricane Irma -- another massive storm -- hit the northeast part of the island. The U.S. Virgin Islands have been similarly devastated.

In addition to Puerto Rico's electric authorities, PREPA and AES, the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority is in the process of restoring electrify to customers that lost it during the hurricanes. The authority has weak internal liquidity and limited cash on hand or other resources to finance capital expenditures, Moody's said. However, the rating agency added, that its debt service is fully-funded.

Puerto Rico's power outages are the Largest in US History
Oct 26, 2017

In terms of the total number of lost hours of electricity, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are in the midst of the largest blackout in US history, according to a report from an economic research company

In terms of the total number of lost hours of electricity, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are in the midst of the largest blackout in US history, according to a report from an economic research company

That 1.25 billion number will continue to grow. More than a month after Hurricane Maria knocked out the electric grid on the islands, the vast majority of residents remain without electricity, and the restoration of that power is months away

75 days after Maria, this is life in St. Croix
Updated 6:33 AM ET, Sun December 3, 2017

The sound of rattling generators fill Tarik McMillan's ears when he wakes up.
The noise is all around him, a mix between a car engine and a really big blender.
On St. Croix, an island where many places still don't have power, the diesel generators in his neighborhood rumble through the night.
He walks to the kitchen and greets his grandpa, who's boiling water on a propane stove to make coffee. Without power, the coffeemaker is a museum piece
It's been 75 days since Hurricane Maria hammered the US Virgin Islands, and although the buzz of daily life is returning, the storm's ghost hovers over everything.
Power remains out for more than 60% of the territory. On St. Croix, the largest of the islands, only about a fourth of residents -- known as Crucians -- have electricity. Many homes still have no roofs. Cell networks are spotty.
This is the new normal for McMillan and the islands' other residents as they negotiate their daily lives. There's a gigantic line on their calendar -- before Maria, and after. Almost nothing about the two is the same.

Three days before Maria made landfall, McMillan, 25, went to stay with his grandfather. At the time, the 76-year-old was still recovering from surgery. McMillan didn't want him facing the Category 5 hurricane alone.
Since the storm, life has slowed to a crawl. TV isn't an option. So McMillan has found new ways to keep busy. He exercises. He reads.
He also got a dog -- a pit bull mix -- and takes it for walks around the block, noting the hurricane damage to his neighbors' homes. Some of the houses he had never noticed, because before Maria hit he never walked around his neighborhood.

On the road
By 11:30 a.m., it's time for McMillan to head to work. He climbs into his Ford Escape and drives from Christiansted.
Heavy traffic isn't a problem like it was during the weeks right after Maria, when the islands' governor imposed curfews to allow emergency crews and utility workers to do their jobs without interruptions.
But he's careful. Many stoplights still aren't working. And some drivers play "chicken" with each other at intersections to see who'll go first.

All around, McMillan sees the way Maria has rearranged the landscape.
"There's not much that stands out right now," he says. "Everything feels like it's been this way for a very long time."
He passes gas stations with crumbled walls. A bushy field across from a graveyard is now a dumping ground for broken branches and battered tree trunks.
Everywhere, bright, blue tarps double as temporary roofs. \\

A silver sculpture, with a little-known story about the slave trade in the Caribbean, no longer stands upright on the grounds of one of the island's two public high schools.
Further to the west, the grounds that host the island's annual agriculture fair remain in disrepair. The hangar-like buildings, usually filled with locally grown crops, no longer have roofs. The yellow, wooden booths where vendors sold dishes lie crumpled.

FEMA ending food and water shipments to Puerto Rico, official
says
January 31, 2018

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

More than four months after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is halting new shipments of food and water to the island, an agency official with direct knowledge of the plan told CNN on Tuesday.

The island government appeared blindsided by the decision, saying it was still in talks with FEMA on a timetable for assuming control of food and water distribution. FEMA has called the island's emergency operation the longest sustained distribution of food, fuel and water in agency history, including more than $1.6 billion worth of food and more than $361 million worth of water.

New shipments of food and water will officially stop Wednesday to the US commonwealth in the Caribbean, though FEMA said it has more than 46 million liters of water, 2 million Meals Ready to Eat and 2 million snack packs on the ground for distribution if needed.
"The commercial supply chain for food and water is re-established and private suppliers are sufficiently available that FEMA-provided commodities are no longer needed for emergency operations," the agency said in a statement.

Héctor M. Pesquera, the government's public safety secretary and state coordinating officer, said the transition period for local authorities to take over distribution should last at least two weeks. "The Government ... is waiting for critical data provided by FEMA in order to determine when the responsibilities should be transferred from FEMA to the Government of Puerto Rico," Pesquera said in a statement. "This has not happened yet and we were not informed that supplies would stop arriving, nor did the Government of Puerto Rico authorize this action."

Pesquera acknowledged that conditions "in most areas have improved and many economic indicators are showing that recovery is underway."

This is life for 3,000 Puerto Ricans still living in mainland US hotels

Harvard study estimates thousands died in Puerto Rico because of Hurricane Maria
May 29, 2018[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

CAGUAS, PUERTO RICO — Miliana Montanez cradled her mother’s head as she lay dying on the floor of her bedroom here, gasping for air and pleading for help.
There was nothing her family could do. It took 20 minutes to find cellular reception to make a 911 call. Inoperative traffic signals slowed down the ambulance struggling to reach their neighborhood through crippling congestion.
Ivette Leon’s eyes bulged in terror as she described to her daughter the tiny points of light that appeared before her. She took one last desperate gulp of air just as paramedics arrived. Far too late.
More than eight months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island’s slow recovery has been marked by a persistent lack of water, a faltering power grid and a lack of essential services — all imperiling the lives of many residents, especially the infirm and those in remote areas hardest hit in September.
A new Harvard study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, making the storm far deadlier than previously thought. Official estimates have placed the number of dead at 64, a count that has drawn sharp criticism from experts and local residents and spurred the government to order an independent review that has yet to be completed

9 months after Hurricane Maria, thousands of Puerto Ricans still don’t have power
6 hrs ago[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

WIt took Cardona 11 days to find a working phone and a cellular signal to let her mother in Florida know that she was okay. In the weeks following the storm, she woke up at 2 am to get in line for diesel fuel to run the generator at her father’s home in Sabana Grande on the southwest coast of the island. After waiting for 13 hours, she went home empty-handed. She stood in lines that stretched blocks to get cash, since no electricity meant credit card readers weren’t running.
Unreliable power also meant eating canned food as fresh items in the refrigerator spoiled. Getting one bag of ice required waiting for hours each day in line for the one facility in the area that managed to get its freezer running.
But Cardona knew others had it worse. Over the radio, she heard hospitals plead for diesel fuel to keep vital medical equipment running. She heard elderly callers stranded in the middle of the island beg for help for sick relatives.

That Yanira Cardona remembers most about the blackout that swept through Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit is all the waiting.
It took Cardona 11 days to find a working phone and a cellular signal to let her mother in Florida know that she was okay. In the weeks following the storm, she woke up at 2 am to get in line for diesel fuel to run the generator at her father’s home in Sabana Grande on the southwest coast of the island. After waiting for 13 hours, she went home empty-handed. She stood in lines that stretched blocks to get cash, since no electricity meant credit card readers weren’t running.
Unreliable power also meant eating canned food as fresh items in the refrigerator spoiled. Getting one bag of ice required waiting for hours each day in line for the one facility in the area that managed to get its freezer running.
But Cardona knew others had it worse. Over the radio, she heard hospitals plead for diesel fuel to keep vital medical equipment running. She heard elderly callers stranded in the middle of the island beg for help for sick relatives.

It has fueled a housing shortage, a suicide crisis, a spike in the murder rate, and likely more than 4,600 deaths. That a territory that’s home to more Americans than 21 states should suffer with so little for so long is a national disgrace. A hurricane is a force of nature, but a blackout is a human disaster, compounded by failures at every tier of government.
Hurricane season is back, and the power grid still hasn’t returned to status quo ante. In fact, it remains weaker than before, as temporary generators and stopgap repairs hold it together. There have been some efforts to build microgrids, localized electrical networks that bypass the main grid, but the power recovery effort has been marred by missteps like hiring overpriced contractors.
The result is that Puerto Rico’s grid, and its people, may be even more vulnerable to storms than they were a year ago

The power failure fueled a humanitarian disaster
Puerto Rico’s electrical woes go back years. Financial constraints and bad planning made the island’s power utility notorious for providing high-cost, low-reliability electricity. Even Hurricane Maria wasn’t the start of the blackout.
Another hurricane, Irma, swept through Puerto Rico on September 6 with 185 mph winds. That storm knocked out power for 1 million people with just a glancing blow to the island.
It was an early sign of Puerto Rico’s decrepit power grid and its vulnerability to extreme weather, and was an omen of the darkness to come.
Once the island was mired in darkness that endured for months, Puerto Ricans, who are used to an American standard of living, suffered a major regression in their quality of life.
No electricity meant that water pumps and sewage systems couldn’t function. Taps wouldn’t work, so people turned to natural sources of water. In some parts of Puerto Rico, rivers and streams became contaminated. In one instance, people were drawing water from a well near a hazardous waste site. Some people fell ill as they drank water tainted by rotting horse and cattle carcasses. There were at least 74 suspected cases of leptospirosis, a bacterial infection spread through the urine of infected animals